I was determined to make Princeton in Asia happen, and since it was symbolic of my own independence from my parents, I wanted to fund everything on my own. As fate would have it, a Qdoba had just been built across the street from my apartment, and so I figured with the convenient location and the fact that I love working in the kitchen at home, what better way to make my dreams come true? With that, I applied to my first paying job.

Yes, that's right, my first job ever. All the work or interning I have ever done has been unpaid or volunteering, and it has always been work within the framework of learning something: professionalism, the health care system, child life, etc. I never had the need in my life to work strictly for economical reasons.

I could never have imagined, however, that working at Qdoba would be just as educational as any other opportunity I had ever had. More importantly, it would be an education that I would never had had unless I had worked in such a setting. This was made pretty evident from the very beginning of the rigorous training I had to go through over Winter Break. We were introduced to the company and its values, and by the time I left I was inundated with corporate lingo and corporate swag (in the form of my uniform, sunglasses, bags, and various paraphernalia). Throughout my training, there was an implicit understanding that we were representing this company and as such, we had to hold ourselves to its standards. There was no room for idleness or triviality. I was called out once for standing around. I was only doing so because no one had assigned a specific task to me, but my manager made it understood that I had to find things to do. I had to make myself valuable, otherwise I was expendable.

Training was definitely a lot of fun. I built a lot of friendships as we toiled wrapping the perfect burritos, frying chips, preparing guacamole, and other activities critical to maintaining a restaurant. Never once did I think the work was beneath me. In fact, I felt pretty under-qualified compared to my colleagues. I was constantly second guessing myself, whether I was contributing properly or not. The culture of volunteer work is so different from paid work. There is still the expectation that you are professional and completely your duties, but it almost seems like the stakes of volunteer work are so minimal compared to paid work. I guess that's just capitalism at its finest.

Some people dropped out because they couldn't handle either the rigor or the expectations of our manager. But I stuck with it, and I think it's because I truly enjoyed the atmosphere and the work I was doing. There's something so therapeutic in doing simple manual labor, and it didn't feel like a waste of my time at all. I'm glad - if not super duper proud - of being a Qdoba employee.

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